J. Hamlet's Blog: Scarred Earth: A Serial Novel

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - # 28

Ramon held the Loro, their best long range scanner, level as he panned it across the wall of Ehvow growth. The Ehvow coral had taken the remains of the Paco Imperial, the Candelaria Church, Cinelandia Square, really the entire Centro of Rio. He captured the walls of coral topping the ruins, barrels of constructed Ehvow ground artillery, and tall spires with Ehvow ships circling and landing. 

The Loro could take clear images and videos from over thirty kilometers away. Thornseeds wandered the Ehvow building sites. There were smaller, darker Ehvow creatures there too. They didn’t have the bulk and defensive armor, so they must be a lesser variant of the Aliens. He took more images and video of the other beings that filled him with bile and unwholesome dreams: the greenskins. The former humans that  the Ehvow had turned. The Ehvow clearly wanted more. They’d begun collecting wounded survivors, dragging them away. They still indiscriminately slaughtered anyone who was armed and resisted them, but anyone unarmed or wounded that they could capture was taken to the Centro. Ramon focused particularly on their colors, some instrument to keep them under control. 

“Ready to upload?” Paolo asked.

“Do it,” Ramon said, sending it to the Clandestine Awareness Sensor Suite, or the “Classy” as it was called. Ramon set the Loro down and rested on the roof of the battered and abandoned hotel they’d been camped out at the last few days. Sensor-dampening space blankets were draped around their bodies. So far they’d kept the Thornseed patrols from detecting them too easily. 

“You know, when we first started out at this a few weeks ago, I just thought you were nothing but an overpaid office manager, Paolo,” Ramon said. “But you’re alright. You can handle yourself.”

“We can’t all be badass spies, not even in intelligence work,” Paolo said. Ramon could detect the resentment in Paolo’s voice. They hadn’t exactly been close. They’d worked the UAS Central Intelligence Department’s regional office together, and Ramon’d made Paolo the butt of his jokes to coworkers a lot. Most of the others were dead, charging off on a half-cocked suicide mission, and here he was fighting to survive with the man he’d mocked for years. “You think Narcisa will be back?”

“It’s been more than 24 hours,” Ramon said. “I want to hope, but it’s not looking good.”

“Tell me something,” Paolo said. “Is your lack of ability inspire morale why you never got promoted?” Ramon had been a handler for operatives his entire career after he’d joined the UAS CID, only making the mediocre post of Team Lead. Paolo knew his paints points.

“Maybe,” Ramon said. “I was all about work, not about people. Tell me something in return. Why did you join CID if you didn’t want field work?” Ramon asked. “You know tech support, budgeting, whatever it is the front office had you doing, but why not do that for a corporation? Make more money?”

“A question I’ve asked myself for sure,” Paolo said. The sound of Ehvow guns spun in the distance, audible from miles away. “One advantage we do have. The Ehvow don’t understand the concept of ‘covert’ operations very well, do they?” 

“Nope,” Ramon said. “All the reports say they’ve got terrible senses. Maybe they think they’re quiet.”

“I read the same,” Paolo said. “Went through the highlights CID gave us on the Tarrare’s packet. They always overwhelm by brute force, attrition. They’re plants at the bottom of all of that, even if carnivorous, invasive ones. I guess no need to evolve complex sensory organs. But we got the footage of the mastermind, whatever it is.”

“One,” Ramon said. “I only got video of one of those so far, with the yellow-orange-red colorations strutting outside one of the spires.”

“Betting they’ve got all the senses and all the brains,” Paolo said. “They send those Thornseeds, their muscle, out to do their will without question. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what we are.”

“The brains or the muscle?” Ramon said. “It’s hard to say whether we’ve got either left in this war anymore.”

“Ramon,” Paolo said. “Why didn’t you follow Octavio when he went to attack the Ehvow the Centro?”

“Paolo, you’ve made it abundantly clear that you think I’m a thug,” Ramon said. “But I didn’t follow Octavio for two reasons. He didn’t have authorization to do what he did, even if he was the station chief. Our orders were to observe and report, exactly like we’re doing now. He also took the entire station on a clear suicide mission. Octavio was always one to delegate, one to call for executive summaries. He wasn’t a details man, he relied on others for that. Yuko and Jim convinced him they could take the base at the Centro. He didn’t bother checking their work. Almost none of them did. You and I, even if our pasts are different, are about the details. We want to know before we act. That’s why you, me, and Narcisa are still alive and the others aren’t.”

“So we watch,” Paolo said. “Until when? The Ehvow stronghold’s radius expands every day. The patrols increase.”

“We watch until we can’t or we get orders otherwise,” Ramon said. “Somebody has to.” The Classy’s proximity alert triggered. Ramon waited for Paolo, who already had his interface connected to it. 

“Narcisa’s back, but not alone,” Paolo whispered. “Another bio signature following.”

“Human?” Ramon asked.

“Uncertain,” Paolo said. “Not Ehvow, this has the settings from the Tarrare patch a week back. It’s something different.”

“Greenskin,” Ramon said. He snatched the Thunderbolt rifle as he took a defensive position. 

“What exactly are you doing?” Paolo said. 

“You don’t know,” Ramon said. Paolo was too young. He didn’t remember the bad old days of terrorists and insurgents that had followed the UAS’ formation. Ramon did. He’d been a child himself, but he remembered the deaths. All through south, central, even north america were groups that had tried to fight it off. Sleeper cells and infiltrators from the extremist groups had been everywhere. People who would do anything to block the super-state’s formation. That wasn’t even a real war, not like this. “If she’s brought a greenskins back, it could be leading the Ehvow right to us. Or it could be infected, here to spread diseases to the rest of us. We don’t know anything about them yet but what we’ve seen from a distance.”

“So she’s a spy and a disease vector?” Paolo said. 

“Could be anything,” Ramon said. He had his interface up, and had put his lenses in place to take direct tactical input from the Classy’s overlays. Narcisa and her guest were slowly making their way up the crumbling staircases of the old hotel. Still no signs of anything else, not even an Ehvow patrol. 

“Listen to yourself, Ramon,” Paolo said. “We’re all on edge. It could be a survivor, it could want to help. Whatever a greenskin is, it was a person once. Hear it out.” 

“I’ll listen,” Ramon said, not really comfortable with it but not willing to gun down Narcisa in the crossfire. “But the second I hear something I don’t like . . .”

“Maybe give it longer than a second,” Paolo said, picking up his M-Swell. They hadn’t scavenged many weapons from the station and then the city, but the M-Swell, with its focused microwaves, really hurt the Thornseeds. It was supposed to be a non-lethal weapon for crowd-control, a more powerful version of the Pax, but it had done wonders to help them survive when they’d had to fight. Ramon even had to admit that Paolo was skilled with the energy weapon. “I’ve got your back.”

Narcisa opened the door slowly, Ramon pointing the gun at her. “You’ve been gone awhile,” Ramon said. 

“I had trouble,” Narcisa said. Her sensor-dampening blanket was wrapped around her like a poncho, too. She had a loaded up backpack. “But I’ve got supplies. I suppose a ‘nice to see you’ would be too much to ask.”

“You’re not alone,” Ramon said. His lenses displayed the thermal outline of the visitor in the stairwell behind her.

“A Thornseed patrol saw me, and they followed me for hours,” Narcisa said. “They almost trapped me but my new friend distracted them and got me out of there. She’s escaped from them. I only thought it was fair to lead her somewhere safe.”

“Or lead them here to kill us all,” Ramon said. 

“Really?” Narcisa said. “Paolo, anything on the Classy? Do you detect any weapons of any kind on my friend here? Any patrols inbound?” 

“Nothing on both counts,” Paolo said. “But you got to admit, Ramon’s not totally off-base having suspicions.”

“Lower your gun and I’ll come out,” a brittle voice hissed from behind Narcisa. “I’m unarmed, and I have no more love for the Ehvow than you do.” Ramon glared into the thermal outline in the darkness. Narcisa came onto the roof, dropping the heavy backpack with a clunk. A few Ehvow Doomblooms and Pod bombers started to zoom, coming away from the Centro but changing course before they came to the hotel. That did relax Ramon a little. If they were about to be attacked, the Ehvow could easily shred them from the sky. 

Ramon lowered the Thunderbolt some, but not all the way. The greenskin stepped out, her body faintly shimmering in the dusk from the last remains of the sunlight. He’d seen so many of them through the Loro, but never one this close. She barely had any clothes on, the shredded remains of whatever she’d been wearing. “Ramon, this is a big win,” Narcisa said. “She’s been inside and she can give us more intel on their base than we’ve gotten in the last week from watching. She’s ready and willing to cooperate.”

“Whatever it takes,” she said to Ramon. She held out her collar, the same ones he’d seen the ones at the Centro wearing. It was broken, shattered. She dropped it to the ground with a clink. Her eyes were pure darkness, no whites or irises. “I’ve seen what they did to me, what they did to my family. They kill most, as you’ve probably seen. Those they don’t kill, they drag to the Centro. Those that don’t survive the spores in the Centro like I did, they eat them. They are filth.”

“You sound ready to fight,” Ramon said. “But how do I know you’re not telling me what I wanted to hear?” She seemed human enough, aside from the voice, the eyes, the skin, and that glow of photosynthesis on her skin. “But if I get any sense that you led Thornseeds here-“

“My name is Rafaela,” she interrupted. “And if the Thornseeds come here, I’ll fight them with you. I’ll kill them with my bare hands if I have to. I can do things, all of them like me can. The Ehvow didn’t expect that, and they still don’t know how to stop it.”

“She can,” Narcisa chimed in. “I’ve seen her do it to one of them.” Ramon sighed. She seemed fit and more nourished than most people he’d seen lately. Likely because she could feed off the sun like the rest of the Ehvow. He wasn’t about to give her a gun, but if she could fight and if she could tell them about what was happening on the inside of the Centro, it could be worth the risk. 

“Alright then,” Ramon said. “We’ll need to interview you about what happened, send a recording to our superiors up the chain as soon as possible. If you’ve got half the information Narcisa said you do, then you can certainly help us. Let’s all get down to the penthouse room before those damn Ehvow ships see us.”

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #27

The feeds from Earth had collapsed, from an unscalable wall of information down to fragments. The fragments weren’t pretty, either. “Come on, man,” Doug said. “Don’t keep looking at that, it’ll torture you.” 

“I know, but I can’t stop. It’s just … ” Rand said as he minimized his interface. Doug was right, even outside their tower he couldn’t let his remote connection go. After the microfarmers struggling to feed everyone and the life support techs struggling with oxygen and CO2 balances, their jobs had all become the most important in the colony. The network and connection to the Heimdallr arrays were the only link to Earth, and everyone in the place was trying to get at them for updates. Administrator Cheung had their backs and told them to ignore the individual requests. They answered with a blanket “the administrator will provide an update to everyone soon.” It wasn’t exactly having a calming effect on the other colonists. Rand understood why they held most of it back. If most people saw what Allie, Doug, and him had been watching they’d probably lose their will to live. Releasing general reports of the situation on earth slowly kept the emotional devastation more controlled. 

Doug and Rand themselves were both on the first break they’d had for awhile, leaving Allie in control of the tower for awhile. People were staggering around the promenade that connected the colony’s command center modules to the habitation modules and then the deeper science labs. It served as both a meeting place, a lounge, and a crucial bridge to the different parts of the Europan colony. Its expansive windows peeked just under the frozen surface of Europa’s oceans. Anyone who sat in the promenade’s furniture could see into the clear expanse of water. Rand knew there were single-celled critters out there, the first true “Alien” life humanity had discovered. He almost wished he could see them and reassure himself  about the resilience of life after watching so much death. “Think you’ll sleep?” Doug said. “Allie said she’s got it for the next six hours, so it’s okay if you want to.”

“And what?” Rand said. “Dream about the Ehvow killing everyone I’ve ever known, destroying our cities, coming for us next? I got maybe three hours in two days ago and it was all fire and those screaming Thornseeds in my head. That’s just from watching the video. I can’t imagine if you saw the real thing.”

“You can either dream them or start hallucinating them from sleep deprivation,” Doug said. They both took a sip of their icy drinks. “I really wish this was something besides water.”

“Get used to it,” Rand said. “I think it’s going to be quite awhile before Administrator Cheung lifts that lockdown on the alcohol.”

“It’s bullshit,” Doug said, downing the rest of his water and sitting the cup in one of the receptacles for the cleaning drones. 

“I want a drink, sure,” Rand said. “But could you stop? I don’t know if I could. So many of these people have lost everyone. They’d drink themselves to death given the chance, or at least to alcohol poisoning.”

“It’s no good having them jittery and on edge either, though,” Doug said. “Perhaps running out of all the alcohol and having none left would be the most depressing thing of all, though. I guess knowing it exists, even locked down in the supply vault, is some kind of comfort.”

“Please, Doug,” Rand said. “We have chemical engineers, biologists, and micro-farmers in this colony. If we’re still alive three months from now and they haven’t figured out to make some kind of hooch in secret I’m going to be thoroughly disappointed.”

“Humanity always finds a way,” Doug said. “Didn’t you hear the speech from the illustrious Martian colony administrator earlier today?”

“Oh god, don’t remind me,” Rand said. “Putting himself out there like he’s the boss of all of us since he spoke up first.”

“Do you think that stuff he talked about was all a bluff or real?” Doug asked.

“It’s real,” Rand said, letting himself get lost in the water. “They’ve been sending small-scale encrypted data packages back and forth between us and Mars all day.”

“Really? Some of it I understand, like the rationing part,” Doug said. “They never took those final steps to making us self-sufficient, after all. Damn ‘austerity measures.’ But experimental body modification? GMOing the microfarms even more than they already are to upscale food production? Then there’s the weird tirade about abolishing intellectual property, voiding all the license agreements on all the tech and data we can get our hands on, everyone’s work now being in the public domain. It started out like your typical motivational rally the troops kind of thing and then turned into a political manifesto.”

“Listen, Doug,” Rand said, his eyes following a few of the life support techs and botanists walking by. They were all spending most of their time down in the microfarms. If the plants and yeasts died out, it was game over. “Maybe it was abrupt and high-concept, but I understand where Mars was coming from. The one thing we have a lot of here and there on Mars are the people who could make that happen. Engineers, researchers, and technicians. All of them engaged in some sort of project related directly or indirectly to surviving environments that are very much not Earth. We’ve got to science our way out of this shit or we’re dead. What was it he said? ‘Our governments, our companies on Earth left a gap, and we have to close it.’ I already picked up a lot of message traffic about some cobalt crystal lung enhancement they’re going to be injecting into all us to make us store oxygen better and take pressure off the life support systems. It’s supposed to be an IEI proprietary technology, but Nguyen and our own Administrator Cheung are past caring about that. Allie was actually talking about how it excited her earlier. That’s only the beginning. I saw mention of stuff for hearts and eyes. I’m sure even more will come. The botanists, farmers, and exobiologists are having a huge debate about releasing GMO strands of seaweed out there for harvest. It would make the food problem much less scary and they’ve already spent the last five years engineering a genetic variant that can take the conditions.”

“Out there out there?” Doug asked, pointing at the aquatic vista before them. 

“Yep, that out there,” Rand said. “It’s a big ethics problem because it might make the critters out there native to Europa extinct, but ethics is not exactly the strongest place to argue from right now.” 

“I guess I never went in for all that post-human garbage,” Doug said. “People have been talking about post-humanity in some form or another for over 100 years, and I guess we’re finally here. I was hoping to just retire and die an ignorant old man on Earth.”

“Sorry about that, by the way,” Rand said. “I didn’t say anything before because I know you were …”

“Forget it,” Doug said. “I’m here forever. We’re all here forever.” He got up and walked across the promenade, putting his hand against the promenade window. Rand’s eyes grew heavy as he watched Doug stand there. “At least it’s a hell of a view.” 

Rand raised his water to Doug from his slouched position. “To a hell of a view,” Rand said. “And the fact that we’re never running out of water, either.” 

“Rand, I’m going to bed,” Doug said, after a snorting chuckle. “Being a little further along in the years than you, I’m not physically capable of continuing on like this. Sit here, stare at water and stress out if you want, but I’ll see you later.”

“Sure, whatever,” Rand said. Doug waved goodbye to him and disappeared. A few more people passed in front of Rand, and he found himself nodding off. Half-dreams began to flood his half-conscious mind, not of Earth being torn to pieces but of delicious multi-colored seaweed monsters swimming in the oceanic world outside the colony. 

Image Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA

spacetelescope.org

Staten Island Blues #1 - The Visitors

He survived. If only he knew what to do next, and how to keep that “alive” thing going. 

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #26

The lorry and bus were filling up, as many assemblers and printers as they could salvage from this evacuated piece of Yorkshire loaded inside. “Are you sure about this?” Ros asked. She was loading the crates of metal and plastic feeder kits into the few empty spaces she could find. “We really need to get the bloody hell away from here.”

“You’re right, probably should,” Danny Gleeson said, looking into the graying skies. Yorkshire couldn’t be long for this world. He saw one more area of the lorry he was sure he could fill. “Let me go back for one more, yeah?” he said, pushing the cart back into the mini-factory. It was unwieldy, worn down from the many loads of industrial equipment it had carried out. Danny himself was worn down from the same. 

“I’ll help you,” she said, guilted by his struggles. 

“Hurry up, you two!” Aziz shouted over their interfaces. He started the lorry’s engines. The sound of Ehvow engines was audible from clicks away, but it was hard to tell from the abrasive noises if they were headed this way or circling. “We can’t have much more time.”

“I’m aware,” Danny said. “Raif, you’re filled up so why don’t you get going?” 

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Raif said, throwing the bus into gear and lumbering the vehicle from the factory space’s loading dock. Both Ros and Danny watched him go. 

“And then there were two,” Ros said. Raif, Danny, and Ros had been the last three MI-5 agents in the area. Really, the last three they’d ever known or talked to, their handlers and organizational structure dead or scattered. Aziz was technically MI-6, but he’d surfaced to help when they all got that emergency communique about the printers and assemblers. It had been the only specific orders they’d received from any sort of command. 

They heaved the cart as far and as fast as they could with what was left of their upper body strength. They passed emptied rows and severed power jacks from all the manufacturing equipment they’d already raided. The only ones left were toward the back. “Guess we should’ve gone from the back to the front,” Ros said. 

“Probably,” Danny said. “This was a maker space, though. People rented out all these printers for small runs of stuff. All the best and most expensive manufacturing tech was in the front. All the low-scale, pre-Tarrare stuff was in the back.” They finally came to the closest remaining  printer and a stack of material cartridges sitting for the taking, perfect for the last bit of space they had in the lorry. Ros set about unhooking them from the dead power supplies around them while Danny tried to see if he could heave it into the cart. A hum rattled all the machine racks and wires around them. It intensified into an impact that rippled the walls and ceiling above them, causing Danny to drop the small printer on the floor before he could get it on the cart. The machine smashed open, its components spilling on the floor. 

“Shite, we’re out of time!” Ros said. 

“I’ve got to fuck off, you two,” Aziz said through their interfaces. “Six doomblooms are overhead already and the territorials said three of those pod bombers were inbound before they went dark.”

Right as Danny and Ros’ feet began to move for the door, the floor cracked and split. A basement storage level opened up around them as they tumbled and fell below. The entire factory space came tumbling down after that, crushing as the sound of Doombloom strafing went from a roar to a screaming wreck. 

Both of them landed badly, Danny’s legs twisting under him. When some emergency lights flicked on in the basement, he could see that Ros was crouched with her head bleeding. Piles of wood, plastics, and fibers tumbled into the storage, further showering them with filth and covering the hole they’d fallen through. Danny tried to move, but all he ended up doing was involuntary biting his lip and causing his legs to crack a few more times. By the pool of blood leaking from his pants, they were sliced, broken, or both. Ros tried to get back to her feet in the basement level, stumbling and unable to steady herself. 

“Aziz,” Danny said through his interface. “We’re not going to make it.”

They only heard the sound of sighing on the other end. “Go with God, you two,” he said. 

“I hope he makes it,” Ros said, leaning against a pile of crushed building components before she lost her footing and sat down, defeated. 

“Well,” Danny said. “Are you going to tell me how stupid it was to go back one more time?”

“No,” Ros said, the frown on her face showing even in the dark. “I just hope maybe someone, somewhere can use what we pulled out of this place to make these bloody aliens pay.” 

“That’s the general idea,” Danny said. It hurt his neck to look at her, but he did anyway. If he was going to die here, at least she would be the last thing he saw. The collapsed factory shook again, dust turning the emergency light into a fog. “We’re proper fucked now.”

Her frown lifted, the corners of her mouth turning upward. “You ever think about that night? When the MEF ambassador was in for the night and we switched off all the interfaces and comms and took that break?”

“It’s almost all I think about,” Danny said. The two shared a desperate laugh. 

“I was wrong,” Ros said. “It wasn’t a mistake.” They felt heat, Danny’s interface filling his peripheral vision with radiation warnings as they both drifted away into darkness.

Image Credit:

NASA, ESA, J. Walsh (ST-ECF) and ESO

Acknowledgment: Z. Levay (STScI)

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #25

As soon as his eyes opened, Omar jerked his arm. It wouldn’t move. A hard substance was plastered over it, dense and rough like coral. He looked down at himself. Alarmingly, he was naked. More alarmingly, his skin had become dark green. “What the …” he said, but the voice that came out of him was not his own. It was scratchy, a rattle.

“I know,” a woman next to him said. Her voice had the same menacing hiss. Their bodies were upright, cemented on planks with the same abrasive coral substance that restrained their arms. 

Sunshine caressed them from an opening above, but Omar couldn’t see much of anything beyond a few meters in front of him. His hearing felt more sensitive than usual, detecting crunching and shuffling sounds from bulky figures crouched nearby.  From the echoes he imagined a sizable chamber.

The sunshine felt good, better than it should’ve. It warmed him, not just on the skin but down to his muscle and bone. The light refreshed him like sipping coffee or having a bowl of warm oatmeal. 

“Who are you?” Omar whispered to the woman. She was naked too, a fact Omar tried not to dwell on. Her body, skin, and hair had turned green like his. Their skin let off a barely noticeable glow in the sunlight, lightened veins moving below the surface. 

“Lt. Alicia Kent,” she said. “Army, such as it is now. You were the guy on the bridge, weren’t you?” 

“That’s right, the bridge,” Omar said. He remembered emptying his Thunderbolt into that last charging Thornseed after the snipers had gunned the others down. The particles had gone everywhere, burrowing into his skin. It’d easily been the most painful moment of his life. “Name’s Omar Bragg,” he answered. “Were you one of those snipers? If so, then I owe you a lot. If it wasn’t for you my brother and my daughter would’ve been dead.”

“Guilty as charged,” Alicia answered. “More Ehvow fell on us from those dropships of theirs right after they made it across. I opened one up and got hit with those spores they put out same as you. Glad your people made it out, though. It’s what you sign on for.”

“Yeah it is,” Omar said, suddenly feeling like shit for abandoning his post. Even if the Ambassador told him it’s what he had to do, even if it was a strategic retreat that made all the sense in the world, it hurt. If people like Alicia hadn’t guarded the rear, no one would’ve survived.  

“A surprising development,” a voice said. It wasn’t human. The voice’s intonation slipped and slid as it talked. It resembled the cries of the Thornseeds, but quieter and more controlled. 

Windows opened all around them, covering the inside of the chamber in bright sunlight. Omar squinted out of instinct, but his eyes immediately adjusted to the glare, the sudden brightness turning into rapturous satisfaction as the glowing trails under his skin grew brighter. Thornseeds were everywhere, exposed by the light. He saw what the crunching was. They were eating people. Dead people, but people nonetheless. He wanted to be sick. He probably would’ve, if not for the reassuring energy the sun gave him. Alicia retched.

The sunlight bathed a tall, lanky figure who stood in the center of the room. It approached, its skin a golden yellow with patches of red accent. When it got close, it blinked two rows of black-brown eyes at them through membranes. Trails of vine-like growths flowed from its head and back like hair. More followed from the bottom of its body where there were less an feet than a bunch of shuffling prehensile appendages. “Your language is crude, easy to master.” It added from its thin, toothless mouth. Omar thought he caught sharpened things ringing the inside. 

“Exactly what are you?” Omar asked, after allowing around ten seconds for the reality of what he was seeing sink in. 

“I am Ehvow,” it said. “I’m not like the others you’ve encountered, of course. They are our strength, our arms, our thorns. Those like me are their bloom, their leaves, their mindseed.” The slender Alien trailed back and forth as it studied them. “It appears some of your kind can survive our essence. Very unexpected. This has only once before with you younger races.”

“Before?” Alicia asked. “What do you mean you younger races?” Omar hadn’t caught it the first time, but as Alicia repeated the alien’s statement it chilled him. 

“None of your concern,” the Ehvow said. “We came here with a very specific directive, but this changes things. Perhaps some of you can be allowed to live. You clearly photosynthesize,” it said, raising one of its arms and hands. The hand was composed of ten fingers that Omar could count, stubby thumb-like pieces on the ends with with either long, needle-like fingers between. “You have some of the thorns in you, as well.. Lighter, faster, more intelligent than them. Better laborers than our roots. Maybe even hunters. You could serve many purposes.”

“You think we’re going to help you?” Alicia said. “Whatever you are and whatever you’re doing on our planet, I’ll die before I let that happen.”

“I agree with her,” Omar said, feeling a slight headache as he looked across the Ehvow’s many eyes.

“What you will let me do does not enter into it,” the Ehvow said. The Ehvow stepped aside as two of the Thornseeds not eating thundered toward them with collars made from a band of the coral substance, refined into a more smooth surface with a few indicator lights on it. Omar and Alicia both struggled as the devices snapped into place around their necks.

“We’ve had to use this design in the past on our own thorns and roots who stray. I can use them to inject you with a toxin whenever I wish,” the slender Ehvow said, approaching them again. “It will cause you immense pain and, if I command it to do so, will deliver a fatal dose. Do you understand?”

Neither said anything. Omar wanted to believe the collars were a bluff, but he had no reason to doubt the threat. “I’m not used to this body chemistry of yours yet, but I believe this will help you adjust to your new situation,” it said. The Ehvow’s needle-fingers elongated into even sharper points. It plunged both sets of them into Alicia’s torso first, her body shaking and her mouth moaning in scratchy tones. Omar watched pulsing fluids enter, visible through her skin. She quickly stopped struggling, her eyes fluttering as spittle dripped from her mouth. Whatever wounds the needle-fingers left closed in seconds.

Omar struggled more, feeling his hands almost break through the coral restraint him as the Ehvow turned its hands toward him. “We can’t have that,” it said, plunging its needle-fingers into him. 

After the initial seconds of shock, it didn’t hurt. If anything Omar surged with elation. All the rage and despair faded away. With it, so did any feeling he had toward doing harm to the Ehvow. “Accept me as your Mindseed,” he heard it say as the calmness and apathy flowed and grew, blossoming into a dull and simple happiness. “I will help you be better than you were. With me, you will become something higher than your species have ever been or will ever be. You will be Ehvow.” 

The Mindseed Ehvow withdrew his fingers from Omar. “There’s much work that needs to be done,” he said to both of them. “We’re going to need to prepare in case the surviving members of your species decide to attack us. With the Tarrare aiding them, they will be a threat even in this weakened state. There are a few others like you, but I’m sure that soon there will be many more. I want you to work as hard as you can. Work until you can no longer move. We need to know everything your bodies are capable. Do you understand?” Omar and Alicia nodded, feeling connected to the Mindseed as if it was their father, mother, and lover rolled into one. The Thornseeds removed the hardened coral-tar from their arms and bodies. The Mindseed gestured for them to leave the chamber. 

Omar and Alicia followed the Thornseeds outside, the crumbling skyline of New York greeting them. More Ehvow, like the Thornseeds but smaller and thinner, were toiling with transformed, green humans like Omar and Alicia. They were spraying and spreading the Ehvow coral all over the sides of nearby buildings from churning engines. The noisy machinery appeared to be coral generators,  grinding up the street below and reprocessing it. Hoses extended from some of the generators like vacuums to suck up more bits of concrete, metal, even scraps of human bodies. More of the smaller Ehvow were operating other machines attached to the generators to process the coral and construct more complicated objects. 

Teams of Thornseeds worked on toppling buildings by smashing into them with whirring hammers and drills. They also carved the streets up from pod-like vehicles that dug into the ground with massive mechanized limbs like metallic tree roots. Up close, Omar could see that everything the Ehvow used was made from the coral, just with different levels of refinement. 

The toppled buildings and piles of debris had more coral sprayed on them to create barricades and the beginnings of structures. A perimeter was forming, with Thornseeds stacking cannons and other artillery weapons. New York was being transformed. Omar, even with his mind dulled under the influence of the Mindseed’s hormones, knew he was looking at a Forward Operating Base. 

Image Credit:

ESA/Hubble, NASA, D. Calzetti (UMass) and the LEGUS Team

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #24

MEMORANDUM

FROM: GENERAL ADAM SLADE, ACTING SUPREME COMMANDER,  HER MAJESTY’S ARMED FORCES

TO: ALL STANDING ARMED FORCES FIELD COMMANDERS AND SURVIVING MEMBERS OF HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE

ATTACHED: 

TARRARE INTELLIGENCE PACKAGE 5EHVOWC

EHVOW CRAFT SURVEILLANCE DOCUMENTATION PACKAGE

EHVOW NEUTRON WEAPONRY SPECIFICATIONS PACKAGE

Friends, 

I speak to you no longer as a military commander, but as a fellow survivor. The situation is dire. As London and Liverpool have fallen, we fear that Yorkshire and Manchester are likely the next targets. Any recipients of this communique in those cities are to seize whatever printer, assemblers, and CBRN survival gear they can before evacuating. These will be crucial for keeping us all alive and for organizing any form of counter-offensive.

I acknowledge that the Ehvow have dealt us a blow that we will never fully recover from. It may feel like retreat or surrender, but I applaud your rapid disbanding of our larger forces into smaller companies and your diligence in avoiding conspicuous concentrations of military personnel and resources. Those of you who continue to spread the word to civilians to avoid such concentrations as well are doing a service to the entire human race. Soon, I promise, we will find ways to strike back. I have contacted my UAS, AU, and EU counterparts and the Tarrare as we all begin to envision what our counteroffensive will look like, but it will take much preparation and no doubt we will face many trials along the way.

For now, there are many key pieces of intelligence I must share with you accompanied by the relevant annotated selections of the Tarrare intelligence data on the Ehvow and more data we have collected over the past several days. 

First, we witness no end to the depravity of these Ehvow “Thornseed” soldiers. While they exhibit signs of fear, anger, and other emotional expressions when ambushed, wounded, and killed, do not mistake this for a shred of “humanity.” They will not hesitate, they will not show mercy, and they seldom retreat. Communicating with them, approaching them, even trying to surrender to them will end in disaster. Many of you have no doubt witnessed these Thornseeds eat our dead and our living. Whether they do this as a form of psychological warfare or out of biological necessity is uncertain, but understand that it is real and no rumor. 

Second, thermal directed-energy weapons are largely ineffective. It is especially dispiriting that this is the case given the recent deployment of the Sunfire as our standard assault rifle, but it is a reality with which we must live. The Ehvow’s home world, as far as the Tarrare have been able to locate it, is much hotter than this world and exposed to solar storms. As a result, they have evolved a bark and coral-like skin covered both inside and outside by multiple layers of membranes that dissipate thermal energy. They also secrete a resin that further aids in protecting them against heat-based weapons. Instead, use explosives and the older HK Thunderbolt assault rifles if you can locate them.  I’m told a weapon of joint human-Tarrare design that is even more effective will be incoming shortly. This is one reason among many that securing printers and assemblers for constructing these weapons should be considered mission-critical. 

Third, it should be noted that if attacked in broad sunlight, the Ehvow can regenerate from wounds using biological processes powered by their photosynthetic bodies. This recovery is not instantaneous, but prolonged battles in direct sunlight have proven very unfavorable. If combat cannot be avoided, it must be swift and focused.

Fourth, as most of you have reported back to me already, engage the Ehvow from as far a distance as possible. For the few of you out there who have not witnessed it, Thornseed soldiers often rupture when killed and deploy spores as a bioweapon of sorts. It seems that exposure to these spores results in death or some form of coma, though I’ve recently received reports that it changes the survivors into something we’re still trying to understand. We are still awaiting confirmation on this, so more data is appreciated if you have it. The living or dead bodies of individuals who are exposed to these spores should be considered biohazards and avoided for the time being.

Lastly, as we’re all aware, the Ehvow have begun deploying weapons that resemble neutron bombs. These explosives come in both man-portable forms carried by Thornseeds and also dropped from the oval, pod-shaped bomber craft we have seen deployed in the last several days. We have attached surveillance images of these bomber craft and the other types of Ehvow assault craft such as the “doombloom” strafers that have so far claimed total air superiority to aid in reconnaissance efforts.

These neutron weapons have been used numerous times on fortified positions, leaving infrastructure only slightly damaged and killing unshielded personnel in a very large area of effect. Most troublingly, the detonations of these weapons are often difficult to observe until fatal radiation spikes occur. Additional documentation detailing the range of these weapons is also provided with the attachments to this message. Effects on the Ehvow themselves caught in the kill zone of the weapon seem minimal due to the aforementioned thick membranes and bark/coral like skin that seems to protect them from the type of radiation the bombs emit as well. The bombs themselves resemble large rocks covered in lumps, which will open and reveal glowing spheroids when they near detonation. 

To protect against these nuclear-radiological weapons and the spores released by Ehvow Thornseeds, all personnel are advised to obtain any CBRN protection suits from whatever supply caches they may come across and keep them close at hand. Orders are still not to engage the enemy except as a last resort. This should change in the near future, but for now keep yourselves alive and gather what resources you can. We’re going to need everyone and everything we can get our hands on for this fight. 

Carry On,

General Adam Slade

Acting Supreme Commander

Image Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Acknowledgements: Luca Limatola, Budeanu Cosmin Mirel

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #23

“Are we far enough away?” President Yi Nuan Xun said, thinking about the days they’d spent retreating from Beijing. “Where are we on the Sanctuary?”

“We’re very close, but it’s only 40% complete,” Bu, her economic advisor, answered. “It won’t withstand an attack. They barely finished the outlines of the structure before this happened.”

“So we have a big hole in the ground, then,” she said. The flapping tent around her made her uneasy. The soldiers outside were shouting to one another, the ZTZ-199 tanks all had their engines revving. They were breaking the military camp already to move it again. They were attracting too many civilians looking for anywhere safe to hide. “I blame the Tarrare for this mess. They made all of these hints that we would need these, that we would need their damned meta-tools. It would’ve cost trillions to build the 12 Sanctuaries we recommended. They said it was important, but never this important.”

“Maybe they didn’t think we were ready,” General Zhang said. He was nominally in command of the camp and all the soldiers she had at her immediate disposal, but he hardly kept them in line. “Can you imagine the panic? I can. It would’ve been a disaster. Everyone who heard about the project assumed the Tarrare were going to lure us down into the Sanctuaries and process us for food. It would’ve been political suicide to support it.”

“The plan to extend the schedules and spread the costs out was a sound one,” Bu said. “We had no idea we were on a timetable this urgent. We did the sanctuary in Hong Kong, but the orbital strikes rendered it inaccessible until we can bring the right excavation equipment there to carve our way through the collapsed structures. I’m being assured by our people on the ground there that it’s possible.” 

“Not in any timeframe that’s going to save us,” President Xun said. 

“Last we heard, the Ehvow were landing in Hong Kong, same as New York. It’s going to take more than excavation equipment to remove them,” Zhang said. Zhang and Bu were not exactly her best people. Both were loyalty picks. Sons of rich families that supported the party. All of her good advisors had been killed off or went missing when Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai fell. Bu had become her advisor on everything non-military since he was the only one around. Zhang was the highest-ranking military officer still alive in all of the Greater China Confederation that obeyed orders. His chief attributes were having a pulse and representing a disintegrating chain of command. 

“General, President Xun,” her acting Chief of Staff said, another person who’d succeeded into his job via attrition. She didn’t even know his full name. “We’ve detected Ehvow craft inbound.” The three of them left their fruitless discussion and stuck their head out of the tent. The camp had grown during the night, more civilians gathered outside of it, trying to take refuge. The energy fields and fencing designed to hold the perimeter were overwhelmed with a ring of informal secondary camps around it. Tents were spread everywhere along with makeshift tarps and shelters. Buses and troop transports were dotted around. These people wanted protection, but they were only endangering themselves more.

“There it is,” General Zhang said, calling up his interface. pointing out the fast-moving shape on the horizon. “We’re completely exposed.” The ship was one of the rounded ones that faced forward with its dark green exhaust pouring poison out of the back, the “Doomblooms” as they were calling them in the feeds. Hundreds of strafing weapons jutted from the pulsing core of the ship like the points of a flower’s petals.

The ZTZ-199s angled their thermal cannons and missile batteries to the sky. The tanks had shot down the Ehvow ships before, but she could picture the soldiers on the inside. All the targeting software and sensors in the world couldn’t outweigh the panic in the gunner’s mind, especially when they hadn’t slept in over a week. The thermal cannons of the tanks fired, red pulsating beams and clouds of tiny missiles. President Xun allowed herself to feel relief for a moment as the Doombloom took a series of direct hits and began to fall, plumes of smoke and burning spitting out. 

The breath was stolen from her again as the damaged craft righted itself. Its turrets boomed the crushing sounds of Ehvow guns as it worked over the camp. The strafing dug trenches through the ground as people were gunned down in a ruby mist. The Ehvow ship shelled two of the ZTZ-199 Tanks into explosive shreds. Cars, trucks, troop transports and buses were similarly snapped and broken like the toys they were.

President Xun grew lightheaded when she realized she was still alive and the strafing had missed her. The Doombloom kept going, the remaining ZTZ-199 firing haphazardly at it as it disappeared.  Two more shapes appeared on the horizon. More Ehvow craft, this time to finish them off. 

She’d seen the Doomblooms, she’d seen the cone-shaped dropships that the Thornseeds dropped out of when they attacked cities in her intelligence reports. These were different. Oval pods that were long with protrusions coming out of them and green and red trails burning out of the back of them. Their underbellies were open. “Bombers,” was all General Zhang said, before they dropped dimpled, egg-like scraps on the camp. 

The round bombs rolled like miniature boulders, crushing people and crashing through tents and barriers. Xun left Bu and Zhang agape at the ruins and bodies around them, dashing through blasted out energy fields and puddles of dirt, trash, and blood.  She didn’t see the Ehvow bombs open, revealing the spinning and glowing orbs inside. Heat and a flash came from them, the radiation dropping her as it swallowed them all.

Image Credit:

Wolfgang Brandner (JPL/IPAC), Eva K. Grebel (Univ. Washington), You-Hua Chu (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and NASA/ESA

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #22

“Of course,” was all Sandra Abreu said. They stood outside secured gates. On the other side of them were blasted-out buildings, vehicles, missile batteries, and downed Ehvow starships. They’d traveled so far. Burning through a few cars, then a military transport when they met some soldiers until they ran out of usable road. They finished on foot for two days through the New Mexico desert. Thankfully it wasn’t the middle of summer, the heat merely hovering between intolerable and unbearable. The moisture-leeching Hydralator bottles and other survival gear the soldiers had with them were the only reason they’d survived.

“Welcome to Colin Powell Proving Ground, everybody,” Sandra said. She opened the gate, the secured fence nearly falling apart from the force of her hand. An aerial drone had crashed into a portion of it about ten meters from where they were standing.

“This place is supposed to be a sanctuary?” was all Julia could say. She was too tired to be angry. “This is what my lost-ass parents have been trying to drive to the whole time?”

“It was,” Sandra said. “I didn’t know much about it except they were supposed to be a shelter of some kind. I saw lots of redacted reports. Senator Alvez was opposed to the project.” She let out a sad, single chuckle thinking of the debates over it. 

“But isn’t that Tarrare colony underground? Like in the mountains or something? Maybe this is too,” Julia said. She pawed at her interface, trying hard to access something. Sandra imagined she was trying to contact her parents. 

“It’s worth a look, isn’t it?” Lieutenant-Colonel McCorvey said. He was average height but muscular, his dark skin glistening with sweat. His voice was low but soothing. “We came all this way. Might as well check it out. Even if there’s no sanctuary maybe we can salvage some supplies.”

“You’re right,” Sandra replied. They walked inside, weaving around the road barricades. Lieutenant Rivers marched beside Sandra. She was an imposing young woman at two meters tall. She’d been really quiet so far but Sandra had heard her crying last night in her tent in a covert display of emotion. Sandra couldn’t imagine what all of this would’ve been like if she’d still been in the military. It was bad enough being a civilian. Being told to abandon your post while watching your friends and fellow soldiers fight for their lives and lose had to hurt. She understood the logic, the futility of making a big stand right now when they were still understanding the threat. Logic never soothed raw trauma, though.

They walked past a burned-out Ehvow starship, keeping their distance. It was one of the smaller cone-shaped ones ones, a dropship that Thornseeds would jump out of. Julia using her interface to take pictures of it. “Rivers, give me an SAA, overlays with the Proving Ground Map.”

“Yes, sir,” Rivers answered, thumbing at the sensor-laden goggles over her eyes to bring up her advanced interfaces. Wires followed down her neck and into the electronics situated in her field pack. “About a klick ahead we should take a left. There’s activity.”

“Hostiles?” Sergeant Kekes asked, his scrawny body charging forward. He scanned the horizon for any fight he could find. Like most short men given an assault rifle, he had a real inferiority complex and the violent impulses to make it sing. She’d known a lot of men like that during her tours of duty, but not many of them kept it all the way to middle-age like Kekes had. 

“No hostiles,” Rivers answered. “It’s some kind of active power source. Giving off a faint thermal signature and I’m seeing what might be encrypted comm signals coming from it. I can’t make out any more than that. Partial ID that it’s Tarrare, but not certain. Maybe when we get closer.”

Julia gave a sigh of relief, digging through her interface more. “My dad,” she said, to no one in particular. “He and my mom are still alive, but they just had a really close call and are back headed this way.”

“That’s great,” Sandra said, forcing a smile. “First good news we’ve had in a long time.” 

They passed the husk of a burned personnel carrier. “I should be used to it now,” Julia said, choking on the smell of burning bodies inside. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be.”

“Neither will I, if it’s any consolation,” McCorvey replied. They prodded forward to the site Rivers had identified. It was a small out-building, like a pump station or storage shed. Even from a distance Sandra could see reinforced blast doors on its front. 

“Dead Weeds,” Sergeant Kekes said, their feet squishing in a brown trail. 

“They sure are,” Rivers answered. A sizable pile of dead Thornseeds were clustered around the entrance to the building. 

“There have to be almost a hundred of them,” Julia said, counting the burned piles. It almost looked like they’d cooked from the inside out. Sandra tied to imagine what sort of weapon would do that to Thornseeds.

“They’re all in a single spread pattern,” McCorvey said, finishing Sandra’s thought. “Something took them all out at once.” 

With a roll of clicks, camouflaged plates in the ground around the entrance opened. Six rod-like arrays with spinning appendages emerged. The arrays bathed them in flashes of light. Sandra winced, expecting something terrible was either happening or about to happen to her body. 

“This can’t be good,” Kekes added. They all had their weapons pointed at where the arrays were, but they were gone. Too fast. Sandra realized that, miraculously, she was intact. The blast doors made a series of zipping noises, hissing open. 

“Subjects identified as human, standard,” a synthesized voice announced. It sounded close to the “voices” the Tarrare used to speak when they interacted with humans. “Welcome to Sanctuary B. Others await you inside.”

“Oh my God!” Julia said, almost hopping up and down. “It’s real!” 

“I’ll drink to that shit,” Rivers answered. 

“Entrants, please note that this facility is only 70% complete,” the synthesized voice continued. “In case of full-scale assault, safety not guaranteed.” 

“I’ll take that over the outside,” McCorvey answered. “What does that 70% mean,  Ms. Abreu?”

“Tough to say. I couldn’t glean much with all the redaction on the status reports. Last progress report I saw, there were mentions of supplies, sensors, an arms cache, and communication systems,” Sandra answered. “I assumed it was the post itself, not something like this.”

“What’s it supposed to have at 100%?” Rivers asked. 

“Way above my security clearance,” Sandra answered. “The Senator was allowed to see complete schematics only once. The project charter promised self-sustaining algae and micro-farming techniques that could deliver a food supply that would last decades, a power source based on Tarrare tech, even manufacturing.”

“Sounds like a doomsday prepper’s wet dream,” Kekes muttered. “Wonder why they didn’t finish it.” 

“Alvez said they were money pits,” Sandra said. The group of five crossed the threshold and followed the steps down, the doors sealing themselves behind them. Lights swelled as they approached and faded as they passed to guide them down the tunnel’s steps.  “He insinuated that it was a Tarrare plot to build something we wouldn’t understand the purpose of until it was too late. He noted that they were strategically placed, maybe secret Tarrare command centers for an invasion.”

“Or as muster points to defend against one,” Rivers whispered. “I’m willing to bet these stairs are loaded with more hidden defenses.” 

“Yeah, seems obvious now,” Sandra said. 

“I can’t believe I volunteered for that dick’s campaign,” Julia said. “Both of my parents wanted him to be President.”

“I told myself he was a good leader with one weak point,” Sandra said. “He became obsessed with whatever hidden agenda he thought the Tarrare had. That obsession cost us all. Wiped out all the good he did in his career.”

“Politicians for you,” Kekes said. “They have a gift for making the worst call at the worst time.”

They came to another secured door, a yellow grid of energy passing across them before more blast doors hissed open. A wary bunch of soldiers stood on the other side with Thunderbolt assault rifles trained on all of them. 

“Easy, brothers,” McCorvey said. “It’s been a little while since I’ve showered but last I checked we don’t look much like Ehvow.”

“The Alien system told us you weren’t hostiles, but you can never be too safe, sir,” the ring-leader said. He was auburn-skinned and muscular. He saluted McCorvey, noticing the LTC’s dust-covered rank insignia. “I’m Major Ralston. You’re welcome to come in. This place is really impressive and there’s lots of room to spare. Too bad we didn’t find out about it until after nearly the entire post was lost in the attack. The Post Commander sent it out over the comms right before he and all the MPs were KIA. I was the highest-ranking officer in here until you walked through the door.”

“At the moment I’m not so concerned about rank and more concerned with shelter,” McCorvey answered. He stepped through the inner doors, the rest following. The inner blast doors obediently shut and sealed. The rest of the soldiers dispersed and setting down their weapons on an improvised rack to return to whatever they’d been doing

“It’s good to see some friendly faces, “ Ralston said. “The comms and feed access we have here are telling us we’re not alone, but it’s hard to see it that way. Some of us managed to get our families down here during the attack. Others weren’t so lucky. Anything we can get you?” Ralston said. 

“Right now, I think we all want some rest,” Sandra answered. “We might have more survivors coming soon, though.” Relief crossed the teenager’s face. “Looks like you can finally point your parents at something real.”

Image Credit:

ESA/NASA, ESO and Danny LaCrue

Spacetelescope.org

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #21

“Riko, is everything okay? Are the children okay?”

“They’re scared. I’m scared. I’ve been checking the feeds. The Ehvow are still only around Quebec and Montreal, but what if they head this way? How much longer are you going to be gone, Hena? Half the staff left in the past few hours. I think they abandoned us to go find their families. I’ve been trying to hold everyone together, but I hardly know half of them.”

“I should be back soon. I found a bus and a bunch of cars parked near a hotel. I’m trying to get the bus to start, but the fuel cells are low and there’s some sort of password to unlock it. I’m reading the instructions on the feeds for doing the emergency override, but it’s not easy. I also need to drain all the fuel cells in the cars here to charge it back up. This isn’t exactly something I’ve done before. Once I get that I can load the supplies from my car and head back to the school. Don’t worry about the Ehvow yet. We’re in Seskatciwan, the middle of nowhere. All the Tarrare files say they’ll focus on major populations first.”

“There’s something else you should know. Some of the children’s abilities are manifesting stronger than we’ve seen before. I guess it’s the stress. It’s just small stuff now, knocking things over, moving chairs, rattling windows, but I’m worried it’ll get worse.”

“They’ve never dealt with anything like this before. Whatever they can do, this is definitely going to bring it out. All you can do is to try to keep them calm.”

“We’re almost out of meds. I know we’ve been trying to ration them, but should I just go ahead and give them all their normal doses? Just to help control it?”

“Riko, I have a confession to make.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“The meds have been placebos for the past two month.”

“No, that can’t be right.”

“It’s right, Riko. I was only clued into it two weeks ago by IEI. The treatments we’ve been giving the children for the past two years were Phase I. Phase II they go to placebos and see if the results stick. At least with these kids, apparently. There’s some other school in Mexico where they were keeping the children on the meds, but our school was the control group.”

“And you didn’t tell me, Hena? I know you’re the school administrator, but I’m their doctor. I need to be in the loop. How can I care for them effectively if I don’t even know I’m giving them sugar pills?”

“I know, Riko, and I’m sorry. I was going to tell you even though IEI made it abundantly clear they’d sue me into oblivion if I did, then all of this happened. At least we know the children can survive without their meds. Whatever their abilities are, the neural regenerations have worked. Their conditions and neural damage are gone and then some. They’ve stabilized. Good thing, too, because I don’t know if there’s ever going to be meds again with the Ehvow out there.”

“Hena, this is a lot to absorb. It changes everything. I thought we were treating conditions and helping these kids learn like everyone else. I didn’t know this was all part of a sinister corporate plan with phases.”

“I hear what you’re saying and I’ve been thinking the same thing since they told me. It makes me wonder what the hell they had mind for Phase III. I was told there were five phases to the program.”

“That’s … unsettling.”

“I know. I took this job knowing that it was going to be a special needs school and that there were going to be some innovative treatment programs using Tarrare science against terminal diseases, debilitating injuries, and chronic conditions. We thought we were helping these kids. In reality we were accomplices in an illegal biotech project.”

“But I think of where these kids were and where they are now. Most of them couldn’t walk on their own, some of them couldn’t even form words.”

“That’s the only thing that helps me sleep at night.”

“Hena, there’re people pulling up outside. I’m going to see if I can get a look.”

“Be careful. I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the feeds about some violent people taking any shelter and supplies they can get. I’d like to believe they wouldn’t go after a special needs school, but you never know. Thank god, I finally got this bus unlocked. I just need to recharge it.”

“There’re vans and an armored carrier. Looks like one of those new tanks. They’re all armed, but they don’t look like military. There’s someone in a suit leading them. He looks familiar.”

“Riko, can you take a picture of him?”

“Not a good one, but I can try. Here, I’m sending it.”

“Not good. That’s Pheng, our IEI handler and the one who always comes once a month to tell me they’re not seeing enough progress. That’s why he looks familiar. He’s bad news. You can’t let him inside.”

“What am I supposed to do? They have assault rifles and a tank.”

“Listen, you can’t trust him. Hey? Are you there? Dammit, recharge! I’ve drained two cells into the bus, one more and I should be able to head back. You’re talking to him, aren’t you? I know you can hear me even if you’re on mute. All Pheng cares about is what IEI wants. If he came armed he must want to take the children. You can’t let him do that! Riko, come on, tell me what’s going on or switch to speaker or something. I can’t take this. I think I’ve got enough to come back, so I’m starting the bus.”

“Hena, I can’t stop him. They want the children. Wilson tried to stand up and they stunned him with one of those microwave guns. They said they’ll do the same or worse to any of us who try. They’re using sedatives on the kids to knock them out. They said they have to take them somewhere safe. Pheng is going on and on about IEI’s investment.”

“This can’t happen. They can’t take those kids and stick them in some dungeon somewhere while this war is going on. I’ve started the bus and I’m on my way back.”

“Hena, it’s too late. They locked me and the rest of the staff in one of the supply rooms. I can hear the kids crying and screaming out there. Nefertiti lashed out, knocked a few of these armed soldier-types down, but they sedated her before she could do more. There’s nothing we can do.”  

 “I’ll be there soon, Miko. Maybe we can catch up to them. Maybe we can find them.”

Image Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA
Acknowledgements: D. Calzetti (UMass) and the LEGUS Team

Movement 1: Weeds and Thorns - #20

“We can’t hold it!” Sergeant Kilmedes bawled, tears streaming down his face. He was smeared with blood. His face and body with the red kind. His feet with the dark-green sludge from Ehvow. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Chief Inspector Downes shouted back at him. He didn’t really have anything to follow that exclamation up with as his verbal and mental arsenals were very much out of ammunition, much like the single clip left in his gun.

“We’ve been fighting these damn Ehvow for almost a week,” Private Liz Jameson said. “We’ve lost every piece of ground we’ve stood on. Typical that we’d die here. Backed into godforsaken council flats that’re almost an exact replica of the building I grew up in.” 

“South London isn’t exactly where I planned to end my days either,” Downes replied. They’d started out under command of some Captain in the SAS, pulling in territorial military, police, basically anyone he could into some impromptu militia. Of course as soon as they’d really engaged the Ehvow the dashing SAS officer’d been killed promptly. Their group of hundreds had fallen to 18. 

“Trying to think of everyone else,” Jameson said. “Those civilians hiding a few floors up. There’re almost a hundred of them. We’re all that stands between them and those things out there.” 

“No way in hell we can save them,” Private Roarke said. “Or ourselves.” Downes had thought Roark a psychopath when they’d first met. He still did, but psychopathy was starting to sound more and sensible. 

“It’s all bollixed up,” Bob Finch, an MI-5 agent with them mumbled. “The chain of command’s become so diluted no one’s really in charge anymore. Take our merry little band. Highest up is technically the Sergeant over there, and he’s clearly broken. We can’t even follow the orders to evacuate and disband or rendezvous with other poor sods still in this city. Nowhere for us to go that doesn’t involve cutting our way through hundreds of those Aliens out there, and there’s no way the civilians left in this high rise can follow us through that even if we could make it out alive. We have no choice but to make a stand here.” 

A chugging whir started outside. Eric Downes crumpled even further to the floor as the Ehvow guns pulverized the walls and windows near him, the Thornseeds firing into the building from the streets. “Christ,” Private Jameson said, trying to cover her ears even over her helmet. The sound was like hundreds of tiny jet engines coming at them. “If I survive this there’s no way I don’t go deaf from those guns.” It stopped after awhile, like it always did.

“Like I said, all bollixed up,” Bob Finch said. He was the only one who’d kept them alive this long. He really knew the city,  leading them around passages and back-alleys not even Downes knew from all his years on the force. 

“What are they doing?” Jameson asked. 

Downes decided to be the brave one. He slid across the floor and peeped out a gaping hole in the exterior wall. “Nothing,” Downes said. “They look like they’re waiting for something. Maybe more so they can charge the building.” He counted around thirty outside, far more than their group could handle and certainly more than the unarmed civilians in the floors above them could face. 

“Probably doing their equivalent of calling in an airstrike,” Private Jameson said. 

“She’s probably right,” Finch said. “Last I checked the MI-5 feeds they were hitting military and civilian convoys trying to leave the city. Only remainders like us left now.” 

“Wait,” Downes said, seeing two new Thornseeds arrive, each of them holding something. The other Thornseeds tried to take up a more defensive posture around them. “They’ve got boxes of some kind and they’re headed into the lobby.” There were two loud pops as the improvised bombs they’d placed in front of the lobby entrance went off, taking a few more Thornseeds down in a splash of sludge and glowing particles. 

“They’re really coming in,” Roarke said. “I think this is it.”

“Whatever they’ve got must be explosives,” Finch grumbled, after thinking it over for a minute. “For all we know, they’ve got tactical nukes or worse.” Finch rose to his feet. Everyone did the same, following him instinctively at this point. The group gathered themselves, all of them smelling ripe from the blood and sweat they hadn’t had a chance to wash off for the past week. “Territorials, you’re the best armed so I’m going to need you to go first.” Kilmedes had gotten back to his feet, but looked shaky as he lurched toward the stairwell.

“Yes sir,” Private Jameson said, pushing ahead of her Sergeant. Downes followed them, marveling at the pyramid-shaped tunnels taken out of the walls and stairwell from the barrage of the Thornseeds’ guns. The cheap construction wouldn’t stand for much longer. 

Downes thought he could almost taste his heart beating in his throat, his London police uniform and riot gear looking worse than the soldiers’ given all the filth he’d waded through. He heard the gunfire, remembering his tactical training as the territorials lit into the room. They were using old Thunderbolt caseless assault rifles. Eric himself just had one of those new SMGs they’d deployed a few months ago. He wasn’t up on gun manufacturers, but they seemed to be at least slightly effective. 

The gunfire resumed, the Thornseeds doing the usual and barely taking defensive positions. Casualties didn’t seem to matter to the Aliens. As he fanned to the side and leveled his gun he saw Kilmedes take a direct hit from a Thornseed weapon. It took his body completely apart, some of it splashing off the wall and onto the side of Downes’ head. His interface on the right side was clouded with a red film. The combined fire from the soldiers was precise, drilling into the Thornseeds’ midsections in squeals and toppling bulks. They’d learned a lot from all the skirmishes they’d had with the Aliens, Downes himself cutting into the middle of one in a way that burst it open and painted the big windows at the front of the lobby a dark brown-green. As he found his way to a small hallway near the elevators. Cover was minimal, a few load-bearing columns and drywalls all that protected them in the lobby. His weapon stopped firing, the last of his ammunition gone as he ducked through a half-collapsed maintenance room. 

 The Thornseeds began to back away, retreating with shrill warcries. “Got them!” Private Jameson shouted. When Downes crawled from the maintenance room he saw everyone backed as far from the lobby entrance as they could, clouds of spectral yellow-green bits floating around. They settled to the ground after a few minutes, fading to a harmless dull. “I think we took down four of them,”  Jameson said. The broken remains of three of the plant-based creatures were on the ground leaking everywhere. 

“They got six of us,” Private Roarke said. Downes scanned with his interface, identifying Kilmedes among the loss, four others, and then a name in critical condition that made him stop. 

“Fuck!” Downes shouted, seeing Bob Finch’s body on the ground trembling. Downes looked down at Finch’s body, watching blood leak from his eyes, nose, and mouth. The glowing spores pulsed under his skin as they filled his bloodstream. He was dying. 

“He almost made it,” Private Jameson meditated. “It’s not enough that they shoot you, when you’re lucky enough to take them down that happens.”

“That may be the least of our worries,” Downes said, realizing that they’d overlooked the obvious. The two boxes the Thornseeds had dragged into the building were opened, a floating orb popping out of them. The orb was spinning faster and faster. “Anyone have a clue how we shut something like that down?” 

Jameson went to his side, the other soldiers starting to back away. He searched through his police interface and found the the bomb disposal application. “Alien Object Detected” was all it said back. “Really now?” Downes said, pounding his fist into it. There were no buttons, no control panel. 

“I’m out,” Private Roarke announced, sprinting out of the building as fast as his legs could carry him. Downes didn’t think as he watched the energy in the orbs grow brighter and their spinning orbit turn blindingly fast. Instinctively did the same as Roarke, scrambling out of the lobby. The Thornseeds were running in the opposite direction down the street, uninterested in taking any shots at them. 

Downes ran a hundred meters or so in a blur before he stopped. No one was with them, the other soldiers and police officers all still in the building. Then he remembered the civilians. He’d just run, leaving all those families in there. He’d abandoned everyone. Roarke kept running, leaving Downes far behind. 

A flash, brighter than any Downes had ever seen, rumbled the council estates building as it pulsed out of every one of its windows. It hurt Downes eyes even though he hadn’t been looking directly at it. Heat and wind flowed up the street. He had expected the whole building, maybe even the streets to be disintegrated or on fire or covered in spores or some other deadly scenario. 

His interface began to flash warnings, everyone in the council estate’s life signs flickering out. His own body began to fail him, heart racing as his skin flared in itches and then burns. He turned back in the direction Roarke had run and saw that he’d slowed down.  “Warning: Lethal Radiation Levels,” Downes’ interface told him, far too late for him to do anything about it. He fell to his knees as his legs ceased to work and all he could feel was fire, pain, and nausea. His eyes settled on the completely intact buildings around him as he started to go into spasms before they went blind.

Image Credit:

Akira Fujii

spacetelescope.org